


The Sentimental Sniper

by strix_alba



Series: Works No Longer In Progress [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Asexual Sherlock, Other, The Empty House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 11:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1508462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strix_alba/pseuds/strix_alba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of The Empty House, with focus on the relationship aspect and wildly-overwrought escapades to bring down the last man in Moriarty's band. Written back in 2012, just after the end of Season 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sentimental Sniper

**Author's Note:**

> I attempted to write Sherlock fanfic directly after the end of S2 when I had a very, very intense relationship to the show. Writing this was a terrifying, nauseating process that resulted in a two-year fandom burnout. Posting this for Fic Dump Day, and it's the first time I've looked at it in almost two years. It's 95% complete, and I don't plan on fixing the few points where there's still a paragraph or two missing.
> 
> Featuring bisexual John and panromantic asexual Sherlock.

She’s a crap therapist, I know that. I figured that out right around the time I reached my insurance deductible, but I keep going every so often because once we got past the phase where she would talk to me about the five stages of grief and the Kinsey scale, occasionally I got some useable bit of advice. Today is not one of those days, and I’ll probably call her in a few days and tell her, okay, maybe that makes sense, I’ll make another appointment, but right now I just want to shut the door on everything and not think for a while.

It feels like it should be raining when the cab gets back to my flat, but it hasn’t quite reached that point yet. Maybe this evening. That’ll be cheerful. I get inside and lock the door, and then … and then there’s nothing. At first, I’d had Mrs. Hudson bring the skull over; I thought I might talk to it, sort of carry on his tradition. To say that didn’t turn out well, that would be an understatement. The skull got packed into storage with everything else except for a piece of paper: _Crime scene in progress, please interrupt_ because sometimes it makes me smile.

I drop my bag off at the desk and pick up the newspaper, scan it for any interesting articles. Real news, not the tabloids, those are lunchtime entertainment. Front page is the latest political scandal, a fundraising project for a local kid with leukemia that caught the attention of some big organization, and news about a trade agreement. The types of articles I’m looking for are wedged somewhere in the middle of the paper: the break-ins, missing relatives, impossible suicides. I haven’t looked at the website in months, but it’s weirdly comforting to go through this particular ritual.

The doorbell rings sometime between when I put water on to boil and when I’m supposed to meet Mary from the neonatal ward for dinner. Through the peephole, all I can see is a dirty, oversized yellow coat and the strings of an aviator hat, which reminds me that I did actually call for a plumber today. I’d forgotten until now. I open the door with some trepidation. ‘Hi?’

The owner of the coat is a tall, slightly stooped man, with blotchy cheeks red from too much drinking and questionable dark stains on his jeans. ‘John Watson?’ he asks. Heavy smoker, from the sound (and smell) of him. ‘Apartment 107?’

221b Baker Street, my brain supplies automatically. I brush it aside. ‘Yeah …’

‘Here about the plumbing in your bathroom,’ he grunts. ‘Said you had a … rust flaking in the showerhead, on the notice.’

I resist the urge to rub my face and shut the door on him. Shutting people out, putting up physical barriers … Thompson warned me against it, and I suspect that she has this one right. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ He picks up a similarly dirty toolbox (Sherlock would have been able to tell how long he’d been in the business, what he did on the weekends, and probably whether he had a wife and was cheating on her, but I shut that sort of information out and just see a toolbox.) and follows me into the flat.

‘Mind if I, uh, use the facilities before I inspect ‘em?’ the plumber asks, shifting his weight about uneasily.

The question takes a moment to register; another moment to process as being not the sort of question usually asked; a third to figure out a response. ‘Uh … yeah, sure. No problem.’ I sit back down with the newspaper.

The door shuts, and I am left alone for another few moments at least. There’s an article in section B about a kidnapping of Kitty something-or-other that could be interesting, but there’s not enough information in the article to decide. I flip the page as the bathroom door opens again.

‘Solitude doesn’t suit you, John.’

My heart leaps into my throat at the same time that I leap to my feet. The newspaper falls to the floor, and I find myself staring at the door, where Sherlock Holmes is standing with an ugly yellow jacket draped over his arm, hat in hand. An overpowering wave of emotion sweeps over me – joy and affection and fear all at once. Then the world fades from around me, and my vision goes black.

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

I wake up lying on my bed; for a second, I’m convinced it’s Saturday morning all over again. Then I notice: Sherlock, perched on the end of my bed, staring at the wall opposite. He gives me a quick glance, then looks away again. I usually had a pretty good idea of what he was thinking, but not right now. Especially not when I sit up, and he hands me a cup of tea, of all things.

‘Hello.’

With some difficulty, I maneuver my legs around to sit on the edge of the bed next to him. ‘Oh, my god,’ is all I can think of to say. My best friend is back from the dead, sitting in my flat, making tea. Right. I can handle this.

No, I can’t. I can’t even take a proper breath of air.

Sherlock makes a tiny motion with his head, eyes darting from side to side. ‘Are you all right?’ he says. Like he’s not been gone for more than five minutes. It’s absurd, it’s absolutely absurd. My hands start to shake, enough that I have to put down the cup of tea on the bedside table before I spill it.

I stand up. I need to move _now_. Except I can’t let him out of my sight; it might not be real. I turn around before I’ve gone more than three paces, panicking, but he’s still there. I point at him. ‘You. You died,’ I say. He leans forward, one hand up to catch me in case I faint again. ‘You jumped, I saw, you. I saw you fall.’ Oh god. _Don’t be dead_ , I’d told him, but I’d started to get it, to accept: he wasn’t coming back. I should adjust. I’d done it before, I could do it again. That was how normal people worked around it, didn’t they? When their – their important people died. The world moved on. I could have learned to accept that.

But of course Sherlock wouldn’t die like a normal person, and here he is. A good deal thinner than when I last saw him – thinner even than when we first met, and corpse-pale. ‘I’m hallucinating, aren’t I? Because I checked your pulse when you fell, I,’ – My eyes burn, but I refuse to wipe them. ‘I identified your body. _How,_ ’ –

‘John,’ he interrupts, both hands up now, placating.

‘No, _shut up_. How are you alive? Where have you been?’ I don’t know what to do with myself; I have a tremendous urge to pace, but pacing would take him out of my line of sight … ‘I was – I – eighteen months and twelve days, and you,’ –

‘ _John.’_ He stands up, setting his tea on the floor. I can’t get this to feel like anything more solid than a dream, because would he really, honestly think it was a good idea to put me through this? Yes, of course he would. The pressure builds up inside me to boiling point, and I wind up and punch him in the face. The force knocks him back down with a thump and a clatter; a burst of color opens up on his cheek.

‘You _dick_.’

The burning in my eyes spills over; I cover my face with my hands. It’s all too much, damn him. Eighteen months of waiting, slowly realizing that there’s no point in waiting, no point in checking my phone to see if he’s sent me any sort of message, trying to figure out where to go from here.

‘I’m sorry.’

I take a deep breath, and open my eyes. I have to hide my mouth because it’s gone all wobbly, and I’m afraid I might start to cry in earnest. Sherlock looks at the floor, at the desk, at the curtains – anywhere, it seems, but me. ‘I didn’t think it would be so difficult.’

‘How? How did you do it?’ I pull out the chair of my desk, the only other piece of furniture in the flat; also the closest place to the tissues. I have a feeling I might need them.

’I knew what was going to happen, and so I planned in advance; picked a building high enough to plausibly kill me, but one with a large, full dumpster directly underneath the ledge to cushion the fall. It wasn’t entirely without its attendant risks, but overall, I think I made out quite nicely with a fractured arm. I hired someone to distract you at the right moment – I’m sorry about that, I didn’t think he was actually going to hit you – and climbed out, pretended to have fallen on the ground, and spilled the blood on the ground. I owe Molly for that: she was very helpful, not only in helping with the blood, but arranging for the phone call that would get you out of the way, and later obtaining a body for the burial. ’

I stare at him as he describes – physically, okay, that’s just insane enough to possibly be plausible, even if it doesn’t answer even half of the questions I have. ‘Okay. I believe you – somehow – managed to jump off a four-floor building. But – I went to the morgue afterwards,’ – the breath I take is embarrassing and shuddery – ‘And you were there. And.’ I swallow. ‘You were. Dead. How?’

‘Grayanotoxin. It’s a toxin, extracted from the rhododendron plant, which induces, among other things, a slowed heartbeat.’

‘Oh.’ It’s as if all of the air goes out of me; of course. How simple. I should have noticed.

‘It also acts as an irritant, producing the runny nose and watery eyes which were needed to complete the act.’

I cross my arms over the back of the chair. ‘That was all an act, then?’ The roof. Ripping my heart out and stomping on the pieces.

‘Of course it was,’ he says quickly. Too quickly.

‘I’m not going to question your intelligence if you admit that you were scared.’ Human.

‘I wasn’t. I knew I would survive the fall.’

‘You couldn’t know for sure.’

‘The probability of failure was slim at best.’ he snaps at the door to the kitchen. But his eyes flicker to me for a moment. ‘The probability of being able to return soon enough was equally slim.’

‘Your reputation?’ I prod him.

‘Don’t be stupid, I couldn’t care less what the tabloids say.’

‘Then why?’

He rolls his head on his neck and heaves a sigh. ‘Don’t make me say it, you know I don’t do sentiment.’

‘Yes, but sometimes, other people need to hear it, so you sacrifice,’ I tell him.

‘I orchestrated a fifty-foot fall off a public roof and pretended to be dead, not solving cases or showing off to _anyone_ , for over a year. For you. Isn’t that sacrifice enough?’ Sherlock runs a hand over his face.

‘What. Sorry, what?’

He takes a moment to respond. His face is working, like he’s trying to decide how to phrase something so that it gets the result he wants, which is probably not the reaction I would have if I heard it straight. ‘On the roof, I spoke to him. To Moriarty. I had two options, not even options really. I could let him win, or I could let his people kill my friends.’

The way he tries to slide the last part past me breaks through the muddle of emotions grappling for control in my chest, and brings the fear to the forefront. ’Your friends?’

‘You. Mrs. Hudson. Lestrade. Assassins, ordered to kill you all if I didn’t jump, what choice did I have?’ says Sherlock. ‘Any sign I was alive, they might have come back. I had to make sure they were no longer in the picture.’

‘So … you’ve been here? In London, all this time?’ Unbelievable.

‘With a few exceptions, yes. I never went out without some sort of disguise. We passed in the street, about two months after the funeral.’

I straighten in my chair. ‘Are you serious?’

‘You were on your way back from the store. I couldn’t say anything, of course.’ The corner of his mouth twitches, which could be a smile but is probably supposed to mean regret instead.

I immediately try to see if I can remember. Though chances are good I wouldn’t have noticed him anyway. I’d hardly noticed anything for the first month and a half. I come out of my futile attempts at recalling in time to hear him explain that he’s been in London as James Johnson, university student up from a small fishing village in Flushing to study. Forensic science, of course.

‘But … I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you have told me? I’d have gone with you, you know I would.’ Me with my luminous qualities and all that.

Sherlock gets up and makes for the kitchen. ‘Too dangerous if we’d been seen together, and wouldn’t it be convenient for you to go missing directly after I died? Moriarty wasn’t an idiot, he would have left instructions in case I somehow survived the jump.’ He comes back with a wet towel pressed to his face where I punched him.

‘But you’re done now,’ I say. ‘It’s all right.’

Sherlock frowns as he peers out the window through a gap in the blinds. ‘Not quite. But it should be by … nine o’clock tonight.’ He turns back to me abruptly, eyebrows raised. ‘‘What are you doing this evening? Any plans?’

And that is so typical, it _hurts_. I just know that he’s going to find some way to make a train wreck of whatever plans I have. It’s like coming home. ‘I … well … yes.’ For the second time in six months, which is an abysmal track record, but I’ve had other things to worry about. ‘I’m going to dinner with someone from work. But I can – I don’t have to,’ I blurt out. ‘I’m not. I’ll call her, tell her something else came up.’ ‘Ah.’ ‘That works out rather nicely, where are you going?’

Shit. ‘Sherlock, no, I’m not. I’m not seeing anyone. I can’t.’ I put up my hands.

‘Of course you can, why not?’ he says.

‘Because. You’re back.’

‘And?’

‘And I don’t want to do this again. I’m calling Mary and cancelling.’ I pull my phone out of my pocket. He strides across the room and tears it out of my hand before I can so much as pull up her number. ‘Hey!’

‘I need you for Moran,’ he announces, out of thin air, rather than answering me. A flash of irritation passes over me at his changing the subject when he knows I can’t keep up and want to keep talking about this; it’s quickly replaced by joy so intense and unexpected, I can’t breathe for a moment, because he is _alive_ to be irritating. I look away to hide the grin that spreads all over my face, and to catch my breath.

‘What?’ I say, when I’ve got it back under control, then lose it again and have to duck my head. ‘Sorry, what?’

Sherlock frowns at me. ‘Sebastian Moran, one of Moriarty’s three men. It takes considerably longer to bring people to justice when one is assumed to be dead. I had to rely on ordinary minds to figure things out for themselves. The other two – the ones Moriarty ordered for Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade – were unimportant. No one was going to try to protect them. Moran, on the other hand, was the closest Moriarty ever got to a right-hand man, though he hid his hand well. Not exceptionally intelligent, but devoted to his employer’s vision. Or his employer himself, it could have been personal, but either way, the result is the same. I’ve stayed under his radar for this long, but it would appear that I may have been too quick to dispack of his compatriots, once I knew who I was looking for. ‘when the other two disappeared, he got wind that there might be something more to it and began watching you more closely.’

‘Yes, and?’ I’m not completely sure I follow.

‘We need a way to corner him, catch him in the act. If you were an assassin, you’d want conditions to be as controlled as possible, say, in someone’s home. And if that person isn’t close with any of his neighbors, and they know that he’s been depressed ever since he moved in … well, no one would be surprised to hear he took his own life. So, where do you need to be? Not here, you need to be at … yes, it’s the Red Roof, isn’t it? Their business card is sticking out from under your tea cup, it wasn’t that difficult.’ He flips my phone over in his hand.

‘Moran,’ I recall. ‘Hang on …’ The name seemed familiar when he first mentioned it; now I gather Thursday’s newspaper from the pile under the desk, and flip to –

‘Page fifteen, section five, recently fired from his position at a small recruitment company for insider trading.’ Sherlock sounds pleased; I glance up from the paper to find him wearing a peculiar proud expression.

‘It’s a difficult habit to break,’ I admit. He smirks. ‘So you’re telling me this Moran fellow, he’s been waiting to kill me? For eighteen months?’

‘Willing, I believe would be the word. He hasn’t yet had any concrete evidence to compel him to try, and I intend to ensure that he never gets any.’ He stands again, begins pacing. ‘You will go to meet this woman, as scheduled. I’ll arrange for Lestrade to meet me here. He can make the arrest, I can stop dressing like a small-town hipster whenever I go out, and we’ll go pay Mrs. Hudson a visit.’

It takes me a few seconds to realize that I’m staring at him with my mouth hanging open, trying to synthesize everything he just said. ‘She doesn’t know yet?’ I finally ask, pulling myself together.

‘I thought it best to have someone else there to help catch her in case she faints. If I’d known what was going to happen, I’d have done it the other way round.’

I barely catch his smile before it disappears, but I have to return it because yes, I did lose consciousness over him. ‘Yes, well. It’s not every day that your best friend returns from the dead to tell you there’s someone about to try and kill you.’

‘Thank god, can you imagine.’ And, there it is, that expansive happiness when he takes a break from being the harbinger of doom to share a good giggle. Our eyes meet and I contemplate his likely confusion if I got up and hugged him, but while I contemplate, he turns and picks up that disgusting yellow jacket and toolbox. ‘Do you mind if I use your bathroom again? I still need to go inform Lestrade that his services will be required.’ He disappears; when he comes out a few minutes later, I would swear blind he wasn’t the same person if it weren’t for the mark from my fist on his face.

‘How do you do that?’ I ask, because while it’s a struggle not to laugh at the hat, the whole before and after effect is quite impressive.

‘Practical application of close observation and theatre makeup.’ He taps the dull red flush on his face. ‘What time are you going out tonight?’

‘Six-thirty.’

‘Good. I’ll see you when you get back.’ He holds out a hand as if ending a business contract. I brush it aside and wrap my arms around him instead. The cigarette smoke clinging to the jacket is suffocating, but worth it when after a second’s hesitation, I feel his arms settle against my back.

I step back. ‘Yeah. Later.’

He gives me a confused look and pauses for a moment; then hunches over again, slumps out the door, and slams it shut behind him.

Not ten seconds later, there is another knock on the door. I open it on a very short, very round man in overalls and a red baseball cap. ‘Well now, if you were going to hire your own man to fix the showerhead, I wouldn’t ha’ bothered coming up,’ he says, sounding aggrieved.

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

I can’t stay put in one place for the rest of the afternoon. I pace; I even try to make small talk with the plumber, once I convince him that I haven’t replaced him. I start to clean up the tea that Sherlock kicked over when I punched him, then decide that I need to leave it as proof that he was actually here, and I haven’t finally cracked. Five minutes later, I do it again. And again. He’s alive. Sherlock is alive and now people can see that he’s not a fraud. I sit down at my laptop and, for the first time in months, pull up a new screen to start a blog entry. Then I realize that I can’t say anything, not yet. So I shut it down and deliberately spend far too long deciding what to wear to a date with a woman I see at work often enough that I don’t want to offend her.

Because the thing is that Mary’s nice, she really is. I like her, and maybe if I’d tried hard enough, I could have fallen for her. But in the end, if it worked out, it would have been because Sherlock wasn’t around anymore, and now I suddenly need to factor him back into my life. I don’t want to make the same mistake as last time, not admitting until after the fact that weird things happen, and weirder things have happened than realizing that the most important person in your life is an egotistical, asexual maniac who has gotten you arrested, kidnapped, and nearly decapitated by an angry butcher on more than one occasion.

Which is really not fair to Mary, who is a very interesting, normal woman and doesn’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire of a sexual identity crisis three years in the making. And try as I might, I can’t think of any way to let her down without coming off as a total ass. When thinking about it starts to give me a headache, I decide to just go, and bring it up naturally in the course of dinner. There is absolutely no way that that can go wrong.

I leave ten minutes before I’m supposed to meet Mary, then have to turn back half a block away in order to leave the key within pliers’ reach through the crack under the front door so that Sherlock and Lestrade can reach it and get in. Apparently it’d be suspicious if I had two visitors on one day. I can’t argue, that would be peculiar, but being reminded that there’s someone watching me moving to and from this building sets the back of my neck prickling.

Mary is waiting outside the Red Roof when I step out of my cab, standing underneath the awning to avoid getting rained on. Guilt punches me in the stomach, because she’s very pretty, and she’s smart and down-to-earth, and I just don’t feel the same way about her as I did three hours ago.

‘Hey!’ She gives me a quick hug.

‘Hi, sorry I’m late. I got distracted, um, thinking.’ Mary laughs. ‘Oh, well, can’t have that, can we? Your poor brain.’

My poor brain feels like it might explode with any number of emotions at any second. ‘Shall we go inside?’ I ask, because her grin starts to waver like maybe I’ve got something on my face.

‘Of course.’ She links her arm through mine as we walk through the foyer and hang up our coats. The hostess is small, excessively cheerful, and leads us to a table next to a young couple with graphs and spreadsheets papering the table between them.

‘You’ll have to excuse me if I smell like hospital,’ Mary says as a busboy pours us water. ‘My shift just ended an hour ago.’

‘Believe me, I hardly notice anymore.’ I smile at her, but my mind is back in my flat, wondering whether this was such a brilliant idea after all.

‘So you’re saying I could be a pigsty, and you wouldn’t know the difference?’ she asks. Oh, well done, John.

‘No, not at all. I just meant, it’s fine. It’s not exactly the opera house here.’

‘It was a joke.’ She smiles.

I look around at the other patrons, until I remember, hello, I’m not here to be rude. It’s not Mary’s fault I can’t keep my head on straight at the moment. (Straight – ha.) Think, what would I have been talking about if it hadn’t been for Sherlock turning up? ‘How was your day? How was, what’s his name, how’s Mickey doing?’

She seems gratified; at any rate, she goes off, talking about one of the patients in the ward. ‘Mostly the same, poor thing. He’ll make it, but he still needs round-the-clock monitoring in case his heart starts racing again. I don’t think his parents have slept since he was born…’ I’d rather do anything besides talk about work outside of work, but she seems to need to go through it, so I let her talk and try to nod at the appropriate places. The couple next to us pauses their conversation and stares at her not-very-discreetly when she gets particularly worked up talking about an insensitive coworker and I figure I ought to step in, change the subject to something a little lighter before she gets upset. This is supposed to be a – okay, so I don’t particularly want it to be a date, but any way you look at it, it’s not a therapy session.

‘I had this woman come in with her son, yeah? Three, maybe four years old, and she was worried because he had this rash on his nose. Week and a half, he’d have it, and sometimes it’d look like it was going away, but it’d only get worse.’ The man next to us is still watching, though not as obviously; he pretends to be indicating a point to the woman when I look over. ‘And it turns out it was because he liked to crawl around with his nose on the carpet, pretending to be a hunting dog,’ I finish.

Mary’s mouth contorts for a moment, before she gives in and lets out a peal of laughter, much to my relief. ‘Why on earth?’

‘Lady and the Tramp,’ says the man next to us.

I blink. ‘Sorry?’ Mary shrugs minutely.

‘Forgive me, Lucy and I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation,’ he says.

‘You leave me out of it,’ the woman mutters. ‘I’m only here because you’re paying for the food.’

He gives her a dazzling smile. ‘All right, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. My niece did the same thing, once. She wanted to be Trusty. Though once was enough to teach her not to play that game again.’

‘Yes, that’s nice.’ Be polite, he probably doesn’t know he’s being strange.

‘Seb,’ says the woman, Lucy. ‘I’m sorry, he’s a child sometimes,’ she apologizes to me and Mary.

‘I love a good Disney movie, and I like to talk to people, there’s nothing wrong with that.’ I hear gritted undertones to his voice, though his body language is nothing if not relaxed. Mary glances at me, lips pursed. ‘Say, wait – you look familiar,’ the man continues.

My heart sinks into the bottom of my stomach, killing whatever appetite I had. ‘No, I’m sure I don’t.’

He peers at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely. I’m nobody,’ I assure him.

‘Ah, well, maybe not. Sorry about that.’

Mary ducks her head towards me. ‘Does that happen to you often?’

‘More than I’d like to admit, yes.’

. The conversation grinds to a temporary halt, while I wonder what Sherlock is up to and how it’s going and when or if he’s going to tell me that everything is over now. But we do eventually move on to other topics, giving Disney a wide berth. By the time the food arrives, the conversation settles on horror movies, which is probably one of those things where we find out what movie we’re both looking to go see, and then I ought to casually mention that we should go see it together, and boom – second date. This is probably, I think, a good place to I halt that train of thought in its tracks, before things get out of hand. The thought distracts me so much that I don’t immediately recognize that the hands putting down the ramekin in front of me. He steps back to get Mary’s plate, and I tilt my head back to look up at the muttonchops and frighteningly convincing unibrow obscuring Sherlock’s face. That, plus the slicked-back hair, is just plain weird. He brings a finger to his lips for a fraction of a second, then walks away. It happens so fast, I don’t even have time to be properly confused.

‘Apparently that kid from Star Trek doesn’t actually have a Russian accent, which, I mean, what’s the point?’ Mary says, oblivious as she pokes her plate of fish.

I feel a buzz in my pocket, and look up. Halfway across the restaurant, Sherlock shoots me a pointed look. _Moran not at your flat. Look to your left and don’t panic – SH_

I take a quick glance at the couple. The man is making a note on one of the spreadsheets in the middle of the table, while the woman sits back with her arms crossed. I look back at my phone, cutting through a rush of adrenaline to process this. The woman had called him ‘Seb’, I remember with an unpleasant twist in my guts; Seb, Sebastian Moran. Stupid, I am _stupid._

‘Hi, sorry. Am I here, or am I not?’ Mary asks, voice breaking across my thoughts.

This is not reassuring. I take a moment to decide, write a message to her, and pass the phone across the table. _Man next to us possibly going to kill me. Unexpected. Thinking._

Where I expect her to gape or panic, she adopts an expression of perfect blankness. Then she goes on to say, ‘But even besides that, I don’t see the point in a remake when it wasn’t that good to begin with. I’ll bet you anything it’s just an excuse for David Tennant to put on leather pants.’ As she talks, her fingers whir across the keys of her Blackberry.

My phone lights up. _How do you know?_ she asks.

‘And yet, you still want me to go see it?’ I manage to respond to her out loud, although I have no idea what she’s talking about. I hope it’s an appropriate response; my main concern is questions like _Sherlock, what the hell were you thinking, why would you tell me something like that._ Back to the phone. _Waiter said. Trust me? Explain later._ Next to us, the two gather up their papers into a brown leather portfolio.

‘You’re unbelievable,’ says Mary loudly.

I jerk my attention back to her. What?

 _Follow me_ , her text reads.

Oh.

‘I ask you to do one thing for me, and you act like I’m asking for you to sacrifice your firstborn.’ Heads turn as she scrapes her chair back and stands up. ‘I don’t know why I even bothered with you, you slimy twat.’ Just like that, she flounces out, for all the world like I’ve said something mortally offensive

‘Are you serious? You’re really going to walk out on me because – oh, okay. Yes you are. Fine.’ I risk a glance at the next table under the pretense of an apologetic shrug. Sebastian watches with a knowing gaze that scares the hell out of me. I shrug – nope, no idea what you’re on about, women, what are you going to do? – and dash off after Mary. Out of the corner of my eye, Sherlock winds through a cluster of tables towards the kitchen.

Mary is in the coatroom when I get through the door; she grabs my arm and drags me inside with a surprising amount of strength, and raises her eyebrows. ‘Now, you can explain what on earth is going on. What do you mean, someone wants to kill you? You don’t mean the couple we were talking to?’

I turn around, but the door between the inside room and the foyer swings shut. ‘Apparently? Okay, here. I know this is going to sound crazy. And you can feel free to hit me when I’m finished. I probably deserve it.’

Mary leans around me to check for anyone coming through the door, but the rippled glass doesn’t leave much to be seen. ‘I used to work with schizophrenic patients,’ she says very calmly, ‘I can figure out for myself what’s crazy and what’s not.’

Despite the circumstances, I have to crack a smile. ‘Huh. Okay, good to know. You know my, uh, best friend. Who was in the papers a lot, about two years ago.’

Her expression becomes suddenly warier. ‘Sherlock Holmes? Yes …’

From inside, I hear raised voices. I speak very fast. ‘Well. He’s back. He faked his own death, , and he’s in the restaurant right now, he’s a waiter. And there’s this assassin who was supposed to shoot me if he – if Sherlock – didn’t kill himself, so now that he’s back, he’s also here to … fulfill his duty.’ Mary’s eyebrows climb higher on her forehead, and I realize just how mad this all sounds. ‘And I can’t see you now, I was about to tell you. I’m sorry. I am really, really sorry.’ I reach out to pat her shoulder, and think better of it, and turn around to dash back inside when the door bangs open and Sherlock flings himself through.

‘What are you doing?’ he hisses at me.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask. ‘I thought you said,’ –

‘Never mind what I said, he’s here now.’

‘Who are you?’ Mary asks scornfully.

‘Nobody. I’m no one,’ he says, in an impressive display of self-control.

She squints at him. ‘You’re not,’ –

‘All right, no, I’m not actually dead. What was that?’

‘No one in their right mind is going to kill a man when everyone in the room is watching,’ Mary says, studying him.

‘Yes, and now he knows that you’re aware he’s here, well done,’ he snaps.

‘Sherlock, stop it. That was, that was clever,’ I tell Mary.

‘Sherlock Holmes,’ she says in a flat voice. ‘You brought your dead boyfriend along on our date?’

‘No, he’s not dead,’ I protest.

He rolls his eyes. ‘Yes, yes, moving on [FIND EXCUSE AS PER TIMELINE OF EVENTS ALSO THE MUD MARKS ON HIS SHOES, OR RATHER THE CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THERE]’

‘So he’s here, but why is he here? And why did he try to talk to us about Lady and the Tramp?’ I ask. Mary snorts. ‘No, honest question there.’

‘Two theories so far. Come on.’ He seizes my arm and drags me back through the doors into the restaurant. Behind me, Mary sighs deeply and follows us.

My eyes go back to the table where we’d been seated, and I swear under my breath because they’re gone already.

‘Where’s the couple? The one at table number eighteen,’ Sherlock demands of the hostess. ‘They were here a minute ago.’

‘Left, same as they did,’ she sings, indicating me and Mary.

‘Can’t be, we didn’t pass them,’ says Mary. She gives me a look that dares me to question her involvement. ‘They were weird. And what if he’d tried to go for you, and missed? That’s my head gone.’ Her hands mime an explosion.

‘They left through the kitchen and never came back; it was very strange. Are you new here?’ the hostess asks Sherlock.

‘No,’ he says, and makes for the back of the restaurant. I follow by dint of the hold he still has on my arm. He takes care not to actually crash into anyone, but it’s a near miss in some cases. I try to apologize on his behalf as we go by, but there is no way I can ever eat here again. Not until we’re so old that all of the current staff will have died off or moved on, and possibly not even then. Mary follows behind us, and I look back at her to apologize as we dodge the sou chef and emerge through the back entrance of the kitchen.

‘Do you have a moment, can you please,’ – Mary bursts out, and then looks heavenwards and bites back the rest of the sentence. ‘No. Excuse me. Would you please not run away for two more seconds and tell me what is going on? If this is your way of telling me I’m being dull, there are less dramatic ways to do it.’ She jerks her head at Sherlock, who is looking down the street as though it’s a very real possibility that Sebastian and Lucy are waiting to hack us to bits.

I admit that it’s not exactly what I had in mind. ‘No, it wasn’t, it’s not – you’re lovely. It’s not you, it’s me. I just said that, didn’t I, I just used that line.’ I have no excuses left to make, I have officially reached the lowest depths of bad dating material.

‘Yeah, you did.’

‘Sorry.’

‘People are morons who will believe anything,’ Sherlock supplies helpfully, returning from the crosswalk. ‘That’s what’s going on. John, we need to go to Baker Street.’

‘What? Okay, why?’

‘Two theories, the most likely hinging on the fact that Moran idolized the late Moriarty, bordering on obsession. Accepting that as true, and going by his phone records, he spent a lot of time and effort to [Moran was obsessed with Moriarty; he wants to fulfill his great plan, and that means that if it turns out that Sherlock is not dead, then Moriarty will be discredited; can’t have that, can he, and he knows that the first place Sherlock will go if he’s not dead is to either John or Mrs. Hudson, but most likely John, so, stake out his place to watch and see if he comes to either; and make preparations for what he’ll do if he does return.]

[MISSING SECTION]

We don’t talk much on the walk there, except for when he pulls out his phone to send a text. I lean over his arm to read, but all I catch are the last few words: behind XX on XX road.

‘Who …’ I ask.

‘Lestrade and company.’

‘Ah.’ I hope Sally isn’t there, we haven’t gotten along very well lately. Even more so than before.

After twenty minutes and three cross-streets in one direction, turning down a semi-residential street that bends around unexpectedly and comes out near a bank, going through a service alley to the back of a building that involves squeezing past an idling truck, and nearly getting hit by a car going the wrong direction down a one-way street, we end up in an alley between two houses so narrow that I have to follow him in single file to fit. I couldn’t have said where we were, besides ‘general vicinity of Baker Street’, until at the end of the alley, he flattens himself against the wall and looks out. I copy him; and my mouth goes dry as I look out at our old door. It’s okay, I tell myself, but the sight still makes me feel like turning and leaving before it can really sink in. I reach out and catch his sleeve to reassure myself; he looks at me oddly.

I shake my head. ‘Sorry, it’s just …’

‘Just what?’

‘I … twelve hours ago, you were a tombstone, okay? It’s a bit difficult.’

He slides his wrist out of my grip, and takes my hand. With the other, he rips off the false beard and eyebrows, though nothing can be done about the grease in his hair. ‘John, look. I’m here.’

I look at him. Yes, right here, very solid and real and examining at me with the sort of intensity that, under other circumstances and at other times, would make me extremely uncomfortable. I breathe. ‘I’m fine,’ I say.

‘Good.’ He turns away and scans the street. ‘There, do you see? Moran should be … here. Probably.’ He glances behind him at the wall we’re leaning on.

‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘There’s a better vantage point from the front window of this house behind us than anywhere else on the street. Uninhabited, currently, which makes it even more convenient for a sniper.’

‘Of course. So we’re waiting for him to, what?’

‘Hm? Oh, he’s not doing anything at the moment, I expect; we’re waiting for the police to show up. Hopefully not as late as usual.’ He checks his watch.

And we wait. I don’t suppose it’s more than ten minutes total, but the whole not knowing exactly what’s going on makes it stretch more. Sherlock doesn’t say anything else, and puts a hand over my mouth when I try to ask if he did, in fact, follow around a man who wants him dead, just to look at his shoes. Half a dozen people pass by on Baker Street without seeing us; no one I recognize. Idly, I wonder whether the two remaining assassins who moved in down the street are still around. Then I remember that there’s a back entrance to the alley, and check on that.

Finally, Sherlock taps my arm, jerking his head at the Baker Street entrance. From what I can see of it, the street is practically deserted, and the only sounds I can hear are those I’d expect: cars driving past, someone slamming a door down the street, a girl shouting to her mother. I puzzle over it until I hear voices pounding against the front of the house.

‘Is that?’

‘Our friends from Scotland Yard,’ he says, peeling off the wall to position himself in the alley entrance, blocking it off from the street. I settle for standing behind him as backup, looking over my shoulder. Just in case, I tell myself, but it’s not behind me that I need to worry about after all. A soft, almost unnoticeable squeak breaks through the ambient noises and grabs my attention. This is a house, I remind myself, an old house, and houses have windows. I look up at the second floor, and it barely surprises me to see a pair of hands pushing up the frame of a window. As they do, several angry voices inside drift through. I put a hand out to warn Sherlock; he turns around in time to see the person inside throw out a roll of metal bars. I jump out of the way as it clatters down the wall, turning into a fire ladder that ends where my head was a second ago.

Above, a square-jawed, thatch-headed man leans out the window – Moran. He turns and shouts something indecipherable back into the room; a woman’s voice, presumably Lucy’s, answers, garbled in with two other men. Moran pushes his head and shoulders through the window while I watch with bated breath. For a second, it looks like he’s about to fly away like a lopsided vulture; then he unbalances, and topples forwards headfirst.

I cry out and back off, extremely not keen on having him land on top of me, but the fall never comes, and appears to be some sort of gymnastic maneuver: he is now hanging from the first bar of the fire ladder, a shadow against the brick wall.

‘What are you hoping to achieve?’ Sherlock asks him.

Moran snarls and twists himself around, kicking, to get a proper hold on the ladder and climb down. I plant my feet farther apart, and brace myself to grab him as soon as he sets foot on the ground.

‘Wait,’ says Sherlock, who, with a short glance over his shoulder, adopts a similar pose.

‘You want me to catch him?’ I ask, desperately hoping that this is not the case as I swat one of Moran’s flailing feet out of my face.

He doesn’t get an opportunity to answer, as at this point, Moran kicks off the ladder and tries to barrel through me before he’s properly got his balance. I twist to take his weight on my shoulder and keep him from making a break for it, though he’s got the height advantage and doesn’t quite go down the way I was hoping he would. He sort of pushes off and staggers back a bit. I run with his surprise and avoid the punch he throws at me by jumping at him, knee up to hit him in the groin.

That’s the idea, anyway, he moves and it doesn’t quite connect and it sends both of us stumbling against the wall. Something hard and irregular at his hip jabs me. Oh fuck, he’s got a gun, I think, which shouldn’t be unexpected, but it does set my heart pounding. And then Sherlock is there, long arms wrapping around Moran, pulling him into some kind of judo hold. I run out into the street while they grapple behind me.

A policeman roughly the size of an old-growth oak tree is standing guard at the front door – Clarence, relatively new, I’ve only met him once or twice before. ‘Oi! Over here, hi,’ I wave at him urgently. Big man, big man with handcuffs, excellent.

Behind me, Moran grunts, followed by the ear-splitting bang of a gunshot less than ten feet from me. Clarence’s eyes widen at the sound, and my chest constricts with fear. I spin on the spot with my heart in my throat, and instead of the terrifying visions racing through my head, I see Moran collapsing to the ground, clutching his foot and hissing in pain.

‘He missed,’ says Sherlock in an absolutely toneless voice, bending down to pick up the gun. To the man on the ground, he says, ‘I must confess, I’m disappointed. Climbing out of windows and waving around handguns, not exactly up to your usual standards, is it?’

A sound like a pent-up whimper escapes from Moran. I approach him, careful not to step in the small but growing puddle of blood around his feet. ‘Let me see. I’m a doctor,’ I tell him. (A small part of my brain reminds me that he probably knows this already.) He curls in even more tightly on himself, until all I can see of his face is the bulging muscles where his jaw is clenched.

‘Leave him, John.’

‘You’re going to bleed out, stop it.’ I’m reluctant to actually touch him, all things considered.

Moran makes a choked noise and extends his leg. I suck in my breath at the dark, messy hole in his shoe, which is going to have to come off. That, I try to do as gently as possible, but he lets loose a shout almost as soon as I touch the laces.

‘Sorry, yeah, I know. It hurts. Swearing helps.’ I pull the laces out completely and ease the rest of the shoe off while he clutches his leg and spits out a stream of profanities. Can’t blame him.

‘Sherlock, I need your scarf,’ I say, once the shoe is off and on the ground, and ‘Now,’ when he hesitates. I’ll buy him another stupid scarf later, I make a mental note to myself as I tie it as tightly as possible around Moran’s foot. My hands start to shine red in the street lamps, and this is so, so unhygienic, it makes me cringe.

When I finish, I stand and reach down to pull him to his feet. He makes a long-suffering face, but the scuffle and the pain haven’t completely changed him from the odd, well-spoken man at the restaurant. Clarence steps in then, giving him an arm to lean on while he walks that also makes sure that he goes nowhere by himself.

A police car pulls up around the corner as we exit the alley. The driver sounds less than pleased when Clarence dumps Moran in the back of the car and insists that he be whisked off to hospital, now, no we aren’t waiting for Lestrade. Send another car for everyone else. The door of the house opens, and Lestrade comes out with a familiar curly-haired woman, leading Lucy. Sally casts a glance our way; I wait for Sherlock to react, but his eyes slide over her and focus wholly on Lucy.

‘I swear, you can put me in a straight-jacket and leave me on the side of the road while you get another car, just don’t make me get in one with him,’ she begs Lestrade, cutting herself off when she sees the first police car pull away. ‘Who are you?’ Sherlock strides up to her. ‘You’re not one of Moriarty’s.’‘Lucy Saxon,’ she says, metaphorically latching onto him like a life preserver. ‘I’m not, I’m his wife, you see, and he said. He said it would be safe, that I was just there to help him blend in. I didn’t know it would involve this, and he gets so angry …’ About halfway through, I begin to get the feeling that it sounds rather rehearsed, calculated to sound the part of the terrified, unwilling accomplice and not the woman every bit as strong-willed as Moran had been.

‘Excuse me, what is going on?’ Sally interrupts. What are we here for?’ She manages to simultaneously address this to Sherlock, while still only looking at Lestrade, with the result that they both try to answer at once.

‘Attempted murder of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes,’ says Lestrade.

‘The murder of Kitty [NAME],’ says Sherlock.

‘What?’ I ask at the same time as the other two.

He blinks around at us. ‘The journalist,’ he says, as though explaining the obvious. ‘You remember, John, we went to her house that night.’

I think it’s unlikely that I will ever forget, nor forget that the night began with us running through London in handcuffs, away from the same people who are now standing in front of us. Running, and ending up breaking into some woman’s apartment, where … ‘Oh, no. No, that was her, that was …’ Not that I’d liked her … still.

‘Journalist. Interviewed the children’s actor, Richard Brooke, it was in the papers last year. You might have seen them.’ He directs his comment at Sally. Her eyes flash.

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘She knew too much. If I come back, she writes about the deception committed by the greatest criminal of all time, and I gain back my credibility. If she stays quiet, then I simply failed to commit suicide properly, and was trying to save face until the public forgot. I suppose Moran had reason to think that she would change her mind, but all the same, he was careless.’

Lestrade shifts his weight, eyes travelling from my bloody hands to Sherlock’s ill-fitting uniform. ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us how you came to that conclusion? Just so I have something to tell my superiors.’ _Because they all think you’re an attention-seeking pathological liar,_ I hear, and from the tiny shifts in his body language, Sherlock hears it as well.

‘If you go to [XX address], you’ll find your evidence. Anonymous tip-off.’ His smile is strained.

Lestrade makes a note of it on the back of a receipt. There’s an awkward five minutes or so in which we stand around against the house in a semicircle with Lucy at the center, waiting for another car to show up to take them back to the station. No one speaks until then. When the car does arrive, Lestrade pauses before he gets in to give us a brusque nod. ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he says. Sherlock nods back, and I suppose that’s as much as anyone is going to get out of them at the moment.

Then it’s just us, standing on the street in the near-dark. Sherlock pulls out his phone and dials. ‘Hello. Yes. Mrs. Hudson? It’s taken care of.’ He hangs up and lunges across the street, and I have to jog to keep up.

As we reach the other side, Mrs. Hudson emerges from the door of 217 Baker Street. Sherlock swoops down on her to kiss her cheek.

‘Are you sure it’s all right, [name from first episode, the one with ‘married ones’] was all aflutter.’

‘Absolutely nothing to worry about,’ he says, arm on her shoulder and a genuine smile on his face this time.

‘And John, dear, how are you?’

‘I’m …’ I wonder if I should answer that honestly, decide that she really does want to know, and then realize that I have no idea how to answer anyway. ‘Okay. Coping. Did you, um, know about all this?’

‘Not exactly. _He_ turned up half an hour ago and made me drop one of my grandmother’s plates. I thought I was seeing a ghost.’ She shakes her head and looks around the street nervously before unlocking our old door. ‘I didn’t even get a chance to clean it up. Wait here, I don’t want you getting any in your shoes.’ She runs down the familiar green hall into her flat. I hover on the street, not sure whether to enter. With a nasty jolt, it occurs to me that there’s no reason why she wouldn’t have let out our rooms ages ago. I’d hardly seen her, once we’d figured out what to do with Sherlock’s things.

‘The rooms are empty again,’ he says, looking up at the window to the living room as if he can read my thoughts. ‘There’s an English professor in 221C now, but he’s out drinking most nights when he’s not visiting his girlfriend. He shouldn’t interfere with us too much, if that’s all right with you.’

It takes a moment to parse. ‘You want me to move back in with you.’

‘I don’t get the impression that your current location is particularly agreeable.’ He spins on the spot; the effect is a little less dramatic than usual, given that he’s wearing an apron and bowtie..

I don’t even have to think about it – of course I will – but the words stick in my mouth, because what he’s asking is different. This isn’t just two strangers who happen to be the only ones willing to put up with each other, this is two … people … two friends saying ‘Look, not being with you was hellish, let’s not do that again.’ Except that that’s not all that’s going on here, not for me at least.

‘Of course, if you’d rather not, I understand.’

‘No, Sherlock, I just’ – I’m having a terminology crisis right here, give me a moment –

‘Not really, I rarely understand what runs through those heads of yours, even you, but I can see why in some hypothetical situations it might not be beneficial for you to,’ –

And he’s off, jumping to conclusions that are for once totally wrong. ‘Sherlock,’ –

‘It’s not as close to the hospital; and of course, there’s the emotional aspect, which I can understand not wanting to become entangled in again,’ –

‘Sherlock, will you listen to me?’

He reins himself in with a visible effort.

‘Why wouldn’t I? If the new professor doesn’t work out then … then we’ll murder him and hide the body from Mrs. Hudson.’

‘Oh, I don’t think it’ll come to that. Blackmail, possibly, but that’s much less illegal.’ He smirks.

‘Not by much.’ But I smile.

‘When can you make the move?’ he asks.

‘As soon as possible.’ Realistically, probably not for a few weeks, but realism has never had much of an effect where he is concerned.

‘Good. How about now?’

I blink a couple of times. ‘Um. Okay. Is there some reason I can’t go back to my flat, is that why you’re asking?’

‘Nothing fatal.’ He brushes past me to go inside. ‘Mrs . Hudson! We’ll be back later, we’re going to get John’s things.’

‘You’re not even going to come inside?’ she asks, sounding distressed.

‘Later,’ he says, cutting me off as I start to say that it’s okay, we can come in for a bit.

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

I wait until we’re inside the taxi and safely heading down the street before I lick my lips and say, ‘The, uh, what did you call it, the ‘emotional aspect’ you mentioned.’

Sherlock looks out the window. ‘What about it?’

‘Yes, what about it?’ I ask. It’s uncomfortable as hell, especially as far as conversations to have in a public car go, but it needs to be said. I need to say it. ‘You pretend to die for me, I risk my life for you … can we go somewhere with this now?’

‘Somewhere?’ His voice is sharp, suspicious. I forge ahead.

‘Yes, Sherlock. You’re my best friend, more than that.’

‘I seem to remember you quite definitively stating that you weren’t gay,’ he says.

‘And you said that love is a waste of time,’ I counter. ‘Things … can change.’ Or the way that people look at things can change, anyway.

He turns to study me, while I pretend not to feel like I’m being vivisected by the scrutiny. ‘I’m not going to sleep with you, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘No, no. God no.’ Not that the thought never crossed my mind, but, well, lots of thoughts cross my mind in the course of a day. That being one of them.

The silence between us stretches on to uncomfortable lengths before he asks, ‘And that doesn’t bother you?’

I sneak a glance up at the cabbie, but the plastic panes are closed and he seems utterly focused on the road in a non-murderous way. ‘Would you expect me to suddenly become clever, just because you wished you had someone around to have a decent conversation with?’ I ask him.

That provokes an amused scoff. ‘Of course not. You wouldn’t be at all useful then.’

‘Okay, ignoring that last bit … my point is … you’re you, I know that’s not going to happen.’

‘Isn’t that the point of people having … relationships?’ Coming out of his mouth, it sounds like something vile and perverse that one shouldn’t admit to liking in public. From what I know of his family, it’s possible that that’s what he’s been taught.

I try to think about how to put it into terms he won’t think are stupid, wincing as our driver nearly runs over a group of teenagers. ‘Most of the time, but it’s also about two people who have fun spending time with each other.’ Not good enough, he’s not convinced, my brain tells me frantically. ‘And talking about things … liking each other enough to put up with bad moods.’

And now he’s giving me a look that says ‘remind me again why I respect your opinions’. ‘That doesn’t sound any different from what we had been doing.’

Which … okay, fair point. ‘Not really, no.’

The cab pulls over in front of my apartment building; in the darkness that’s fallen during the ride, it looks particularly ominous. I pass money to the driver and get out.

‘But you want to call it something else. I see,’ says Sherlock as I fish the building key out of my pockets.

‘No you don’t.’

‘Not at all.’

I lead him up the gloomy, industrial-looking stairs to my floor; this is an odd enough talk to have in a taxi, let alone in the stairwell of an apartment building. He hands me the key I left behind for him and Lestrade – was it only an hour ago, it feels like days. ‘I care about you,’ I tell him. ‘I want to be able to tell people that, and it’s easier to say, ‘Here, this is my boyfriend’ than ‘Here, this is my best friend, I’m not gay and he thinks he’s a Vulcan but we’re still together’.’

The door across the hall opens; Ms. Singh gives me a strange look as she hears the tail end of that sentence, and I wave. Still not a good place to talk; I drag Sherlock inside. At a glance, nothing looks as though it’s been touched; good. I turn around, and he’s watching me, observing. I shove my hands in my pockets and wait for him to come to whatever conclusion it is that he’s forming.

‘A Vulcan?’ he asks, with a small smile.

‘Like I said, it’s simpler.’

‘You might have a point.’

We stand there, face to face, without speaking.

He gestures between us. ‘This is the part where people usually kiss, don’t they.’

I feel a stupid grin spreading across my face at the idea. ‘Most of the time, yeah.’ His eyes start to widen, like he was hoping for a different answer. ‘I’m going to start packing,’ I add, and he sighs with relief.

There’s not much to do. It’s mostly symbolic anyway, so I pick up a couple sets of clothes, my laptop, work-related stacks of paper, and handgun from the desk, and throw it all in a duffel bag while Sherlock follows me from kitchen to bedroom and back again, bouncing on his toes and trying to fill me in on what he’s been up to for the past eighteen months in the span of five minutes.

‘Getting Moriarty’s phone was key; it was among the items collected off of the rooftop, and Molly way able to retrieve it for me. it gave me somewhere to begin without attracting attention. Not spectacularly efficient, I had to sort through hundreds of contacts and decipher his nicknames. The only person he gave an actual name was his dentist.’ I chuck most of the leftovers in the trash so they don’t spoil, and hang onto the milk, as he goes on about the process involved in matching names like ‘Babyface’ and an area code to some bloke named Spaulding, who apparently did a lot of the legwork that didn’t involve shooting people outright. Once he’d got that connection down, he used Spaulding to find other people in his network, eliminate the ones who weren’t in the area at the time, then narrow down the list of potential people who had been set up to kill me, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade.

‘And you narrowed them down … how?’ I ask, when he finally has to stop for breath.

‘Harris Parker was difficult to find precisely because he was nobody. It was a job anyone could have done, but it would work best if there was someone who wouldn’t look out of place coming and going from Baker Street in broad daylight. So, looking for someone in a service occupation of some sort. It’s astounding, the types of people you’ll let into your house under some circumstances.’ The reference to earlier isn’t lost on me.

‘Same story with Kimura – former policeman, but otherwise unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I suspect that Moriarty assigned him to Lestrade for the parallel, a sort of inside joke that ended up being to his disadvantage when I survived. And the same goes for Moran, with the added benefit of also being Moriarty’s best sniper, though he was working for a search firm when I found him …’

His voice trails off. When I turn around, the note of his that I kept is in his hand; his eyes flicker over it. I clear my throat. He looks up and makes eye contact for a second before putting it down. ‘I paid a visit to the building after hours as a janitor and got into his computer,’ he continues, as though nothing had happened, ‘I used that to find out where he lived, how he got to work …’

‘So you could stalk him and find out where he was going ,’ I finish, shoving the last few socks into the corners of the bag. ‘But how did he know there was any reason to come here? You said no one knew you were alive besides Molly.’

‘It’s possible he’d been monitoring you the entire time. I believe he thought of you as a kindred spirit.’ He follows me back into the kitchen. ‘Both of you, the right hand men to two intellectual superiors, who died fighting their final battle … at least, I’m sure that’s the way he saw it.’ He snorts. ‘As if Moriarty ever really trusted anyone besides himself.’

Which actually, if I stop for a moment to think about it, makes sense. In a totally insane way, obviously, but it would at least start to explain why he decided to join us at the restaurant instead of getting things done as efficiently as possible. And it’d explain why Sherlock hadn’t immediately figured that out as a possibility, either. Then I wonder if I should be relieved or offended that Moran met with legal punishment, rather than whatever end the other two met. Thoughts for another day.

I zip the bag shut and look around at the dingy set of rooms. ‘Okay.’ It’s not ideal; I’ll have to come back to clear everything completely, and I can’t just cancel my lease on short notice, but it’s done. That’s good.

‘Are you ready?’ Sherlock puts a plate back into the cupboard.. ‘I’m starving.’

‘You’re starving? I didn’t even get to touch my food,’ I remind him as we leave. I lock the door behind me with the curious sense that I’m sealing a tomb.

‘Pub food,’ He dismisses it with a wave of his hand. ‘You can get better on XX Street. We should go there.’

‘Why, are they hiding bodies under the floorboards?’ I haven’t forgotten that his idea of a relaxing activity is going to meet criminals in dark buildings, preferably abandoned.

He shoots me a bemused look. ‘No, I thought we’d go out to eat. You said you were hungry, didn’t you?’

I pause to think that over while I navigate my way down the narrow stairs with a duffel bag in one hand, and a trash bag in the other. ‘Are you asking me out to dinner?’

‘That’s traditional, isn’t it?’ He strides out into the street to hail a taxi, leaving me no opportunity to answer until I’ve dropped the trash in the dumpster and a taxi has stopped.

‘Only if you pay.’ I slide in next to him and shut the door as he gives the driver the address. ‘And you don’t experiment with the food.’

He smiles. ‘Unlikely.’

‘Then yes, dinner sounds good.’

[End]


End file.
